'Printing' solid objects: At UCI, the future is 3D

Oct. 26, 2012

Updated Jan. 28, 2015 10:40 a.m.

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A cube of nylon 11 mesh is made using a powder made from ground up castor beans. RapidTech, a program located on the UCI campus, does 3D printing using machines that create three dimensional objects built up layer by layer. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ben Dolan, director of Design Engineering Research programs at RapidTech scans a model for what will become a new handle for a kayak paddle. The finished prototype will be built using 3D printing to build it up layer by layer. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A laser hardens a liquid matrix into 3 dimensional parts for a project at RapidTech, a program located on the UCI campus that does 3D printing using machines that create three dimensional objects built up layer by layer. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ed Tackett, director of RapidTech, holds a part of the tail landing gear of a World War II-era Japanese fighter plane. RapidTech made a reproduction of it using 3D rpinting techniques. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ed Tackett, director of RapidTech, holds a pair of iPhone covers made using 3D printing. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A mesh implant made for a human skull using 3D printing techniques at RapidTech, a program located on the UC Irvine campus. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A spinal column implant made from titanium is just one of the many things made by 3D printing at RapidTech, a program located on the UCI campus. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Marc Madou, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, holds a 'laser cut' diagnostic compact disk. The CD, used as a centrifuge to analyze very small samples of blood or saliva, was made at Rapidtech, a program located on the UCI campus. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Carbon microfibers are grown on silicon plates in a petri dish at RapidTech, a program located on the UCI campus that does 3D printing using machines that create three dimensional objects built up layer by layer. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A cube of nylon 11 mesh is made using a powder made from ground up castor beans. RapidTech, a program located on the UCI campus, does 3D printing using machines that create three dimensional objects built up layer by layer. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Inside a box-shaped pool of blue liquid, a glowing laser weaves an outline in rapid strokes. The liquid turns solid wherever the laser strikes, and slowly, a plastic shape emerges.

At UC Irvine, a tour through a warren of rooms reveals rubbery sections of human skull, impossibly precise models of buildings, or delicate-seeming cubes of latticework that appear easily crushable – but won't so much as bend.

If the vision of mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Marc Madou comes true, this could be the future of U.S. manufacturing.

The process is known as "3-D printing," and it's just what it sounds like: "printers" that are fed three-dimensional designs by computer, then build up the desired objects layer by layer, crafted from a variety of materials.

Madou and a program called RapidTech, housed on campus, are collaborating to push the frontiers of 3-D printing.

Madou says he hopes to rejuvenate U.S. manufacturing by creating a new, high-tech, homegrown industry.

"We're trying to bring manufacturing back," Madou says. "We think the U.S. should get back into the game."

The idea of making the United States a leader in "advanced manufacturing" received a major push in March from the Obama administration: a pledge of $1 billion to create as many as 15 centers for new manufacturing technology around the nation.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is holding workshops nationwide to help determine where the hubs will be; UCI hosted one of them last month.

Madou hopes to establish one such center at UCI.

The possible uses for 3-D printing seem limited only by the imaginations of the businesses and commercial operations that are tentatively, but increasingly, testing it out.

Human skulls and bones derived from CT scans might be used to prepare doctors for surgery. Or a landing wheel component for a museum's Japanese Zero might be resurrected via laser scan, even though the World War II factories that produced such parts were long ago destroyed.

Or a visitor might be handed a small, intricately sculpted cube that looks as if it was assembled from discarded toothpicks.

The visitor does his best. But instead of collapsing into a pile of Pick-up Sticks, the cube is unyielding; its tiny struts remain stubbornly rigid.

"That was printed from a powder," Tackett says.

Three-D printing has been around since the late 1980s; now it's even possible to download instructions for building a machine of your own.

But new developments are stirring excitement in the field – the ability to print metal parts, for example, allowing engineers the freedom to create complex designs that would be far too expensive using traditional manufacturing methods.

Researchers are even working toward printing body parts and organs, such as heart valves, which could be grown from the patient's own cells.

One day, a kidney could be imaged using CT scans; then doctors could "print a kidney out of your own harvested cells, and implant it – zero rejection," Tackett said.

RapidTech is funded by the National Science Foundation through Saddleback College, but has been on the UCI campus for three years; the idea is to bring community and university students together.

"We're building a national model of how to get to get universities and community colleges to work together, to create the work force of tomorrow," he said.

RapidTech recently redesigned a paddleboard handle for Hobie.

Paddleboarders were able to try a variety of handles and choose the best, which was then scanned and printed.

Traditional manufacturing methods would have required 12 weeks to go from testing multiple handles to producing a finished design, Tackett said; using 3-D printing, it took a week.

"We allowed Hobie, through the use of technology, to penetrate the commercial sector a lot faster, to give them a competitive advantage," he said.

The handle, and many of the models, prototypes and products at Rapidtech, might begin with a laser scan of an existing object.

That was how the Japanese Zero's rear landing-wheel part was recreated. Engineers first laser scanned damaged parts, using the scans to create a new, intact version.

The scans are translated via computer to instructions, to be sent to the 3-D printer.

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